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[UPPER DATE: A typically lame story from the Canadian Press that manages to miss the point even in its headline: "Rights Commission Wants To Give Up Its Power To Fine Wrongdoers." As Jay Currie points out, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the distinction between the CHRC's "fines" and "penalties". More from Ghost of a Flea, Kenneth Hynek and Kathy Shaidle.]
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[UPDATE: The Canadian "Human Rights" Commission has now published its report, Freedom Of Expression And Freedom From Hate In The Internet Age.
That title is itself quite revealing. "Freedom of" denotes a genuine human right: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement. "Freedom from" (with the exception of "freedom from government control") denotes not a human right but a massive government enforcement regime: "Freedom from hate" is an especially repugnant concept to a free society, since "hate" is a human emotion and the degree of state policing required to "free" a society therefrom is by definition totalitarian. No one has the right to be "free from hate", even if the arbiters of such a concept were less biased, corrupt and deformed than the CHRC and Richard Warman.]
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Summer is icumen in, and that means the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission response to the report it commissioned from Professor Moon should also be icumen in. It has apparently been leaked to The Globe & Mail, and the big news is - stand well back - the Jennifer Lynch mob have decided they'd like to keep their powers to police the opinions of the citizenry.
Well, there's a surprise.
Jay Currie comments :
Dear Lord, if this is what the actual report says the Commision must think Canadians are idiots.
I think that's a given for 90 per cent of the state apparatchiks. What's more relevant is that the Commission has concluded that Parliament is too craven to act. When I spoke in Ottawa a couple of weeks back, I said that it was time for the political class to take a lead on this issue, and the room (including a big bunch of cabinet honchos) burst into sustained applause. At any rate, that's my recollection - it was a long drive and I might have been fantasizing. But I meant what I said. A bureaucracy of unelected social engineers is waging war on the people's liberties; it would be an act of political hygiene for the people's representatives to remove their power to do so.
Blazing Cat Fur recommends applying further political pressure, but he is, I think, more optimistic than I. Jennifer Lynch, QC seems to think that, with the end of the Maclean's/Western Standard cases, the urge to reform will fade, and the racket can discreetly resume. We shall see. The fact is Section 13 is irrelevant to the Queen's peace except as a personal shakedown racket for a freaky CHRC alumnus whose behaviour is at least as sick and creepy as anyone he and the Commission has ever targeted. The racket cannot withstand scrutiny.
Oh, and by the way, I know Ezra Levant liked the Prime Minister's speech to the Canadian Jewish Congress. But I would have preferred it had he declined to accept an honour previously awarded to Richard Warman.
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